The Scathing Atheist - ScathingAtheist 202: Anchor Management Edition

Episode Date: December 29, 2016

In this week’s episode, Roy Moore rises once again from Crystal Lake, Asian schoolgirls dressed like Hitler does not give us any ideas for sexual role-playing, and Bryce Blankenagel of the Naked Mormonism podcast will be here to put the “War” back in Mwar-Mon. To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click there: http://www.amazon.com/Diatribes-Godless-Misanthrope-Scathing-Presents-ebook/dp/B00J53FZFI/ref=sr11?ie=UTF8&qid=1396141562&sr=8-1 To check out our sister show, The Skepticrat, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/the-skepticrat To check out our sister show’s hot friend, God Awful Movies, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/god-awful-movies Guest Links: To hear more from Bryce, you can check out his excellent podcast here: http://nakedmormonismpodcast.com/index.html To check out the Real Book of Mormon dot org (referenced in the interview), check here: http://realbookofmormon.org/index.html Headlines: Alabama governor interviews Roy Moore for Jeff Sessions’ senate seat: http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2016/12/21/alabamagovernorinterviewsroymooreforsessionssenateseat.html Uk poll shows belief in god dropped in 2016 http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2016/12/23/new-uk-poll-finds-belief-in-god-dropped-significantly-in-2016/ Taiwan School holds Nazi rally for Christmas: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38437876 Ken ham “takes the rainbow back from gay people http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2016/12/21/creationist-ken-ham-lit-up-ark-encounter-to-take-the-rainbow-back-from-lgbt-people/ Texas billboard says vaccines cause autism http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2016/12/24/texas-billboard-tells-parents-a-dangerous-lie-vaccines-can-cause-autism/ Pakistani airline employees sacrifice goat before takeoff http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2016/12/19/pakistani-airline-employees-beheaded-a-black-goat-before-takeoff-just-to-be-safe/ This Week in Misogyny: Kasich only doesn’t suck if you compare him to republicans: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/12/13/John-Kasich-acts-on-abortion-bills.html

Warning, the following podcast contains language that may be objectionable to some listeners, which is true of anything with language in it if you think about it. But for some reason, we all just accept that to mean people are about to say fuck. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Jenny McCarthy's new ticket marketplace for anti-vaxxers and other negligent idiots looking to attend lectures and conferences about how to bring back old-timey diseases. It's Ricketmaster. Give us a call or check out our website and find out what's plaguing at a theater near you.

Ricketmaster, making America sick again. And now, the Scathing Atheist. Hey, this is Sharon from Howdy Stranger Improv in Hackensack, New Jersey. So, I just read about a new study that proposes the human face has developed to take on the attractive qualities of a chimpanzee's butt. Turns out, we did in fact evolve from monkey men, and they were filthier than we thought. It's Thursday. It's December 29th. And stop this year before it kills again. Right.

I'm Noah Lusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Henright. And from New York, New York, and Secret Lair, Pennsylvania, this is The Skating Atheist. On this week's episode, Roy Moore rises once again from Crystal Lake. Asian schoolgirls dressed like Hitler does not give me an idea of her sexual role-playing. And Bryce Blankenagle will be here to put the war back in Mormon. But first, the diatribe. Well, here we are, only a couple of days away from celebrating religion being yet another year behind the times.

I mean, we're well past Back to the Future future, and Muslims are still live-action role-playing a seventh century carney's revenge porn christians are gearing up to re-litigate women's rights battles from the 60s neo-hippie pagans are warning us about the dangers of proto-oxidized sunlight or something and science is desperately pleading with them all to just hold still long enough for us to cure fucking Parkinson's disease. And look, I get it. You can't blame religion for still being religion. Religion evolved as an anchor to keep society in place, and that's pretty handy when you're only a couple of bad harvests away from widespread starvation.

But when you're actually trying to move your society forward, that anchor is nothing more than a ball and chain. And that's something that the progressive religious people need to come to grips with. Their entire endeavor is a contradiction in terms. Religion evolved over tens of thousands of years to create the exact opposite of progress. Back in the days before we had writing and meteorology and shit, we needed a strong mechanism to pass culture from one generation to the next, more or less unchanged. Grandpa thinks it's a good idea, only lasts until, you know, grandpa gets old enough to start drinking his pee out of his shoe one day. So you have to create

God, who is, for both our purposes here and in general, nothing but an infallible grandpa that never drinks his pee. And it works. Obviously it works or it wouldn't be here. Atheists have largely abandoned the whole virus of the mind model of religion for almost exactly this reason. Clearly on a societal scale, whether that society is a tribe or a nation, religion confers a survival advantage. Keeping track of the equinox is important, so it just gets folded into the religious observances. Not eating shellfish or killing your cow when you're hungry or whatever is bad for this society at this time. So it just gets folded into their religious beliefs. So throughout most of human history, religion is indistinguishable from the larger

society itself. In the preliterate era, it was the only real way to transmit important cultural knowledge between generations. So it basically becomes the genetic map of that society. And sure, it picks up a bunch of unnecessary junk dna along the way but if you look at the persistent taboos of any culture's religion you're going to find some underlying societal need for that taboo of course as often as not that need will be gone and that's the problem with having giant weights chained to our societies in the modern day you know for the vast of human history, the societies that tried new shit every generation were doomed to a much higher failure rate

than the boring motherfuckers that just did what granddaddy's granddaddy did. There was an evolutionary pressure that rewarded societies that instilled a fear of change in their populace. And it really takes a pretty enlightened level of understanding about the physical world and the nature of human interaction

before a society can survive persistent, large-scale social experimentation. The point is, though, religion isn't a virus. It's a vestigial organ that's just susceptible to a lot of viruses, right? It's a useless remnant from a time when 40 was a ripe old age and angry hippo was a leading cause of death, and it serves no positive function in the present day, but it still lingers on because evolution doesn't clean up after itself. Religion, by its very nature, is and will always be the opposite of social progress. New religions can pop up here and there to espouse a moral code that keeps with present or even progressive values, asking a new sector, a new interpretation of an existing religion,

but even that's just going to be a snapshot of progress frozen in time until that set of ethics gets moldy. Keep in mind that the evangelicals were originally a progressive offshoot of the fundamentalists. Their values were progressive in their little slice of history, and the values haven't gotten any less progressive. It's just that progress has happened, right? And they can keep reinventing their faith every 20 years and slapping a new label on it, but they're really just picking up the anchor,

walking it along the seabed a couple of nautical decades into the future and letting their grandkids be the regressive assholes of their day. And sure, that's better than nobody carrying the anchor at all, but it still sucks. The cultural equivalent of an industrialist still insisting that the car's never going to catch on and pouring millions of R&D dollars into a genetically modified horse that eats diesel. Every time society inches forward, it has to drag along the corpse of religion that it's fettered to. And to our credit, it's still making slow but measurable progress. But imagine how much smoother the trip could be if we could just cut that fucking chain. And it's not the anchor's fault.

You can't get mad at an anchor for being heavy, but you can be as mad as you want about the people still defending the chain. Like I said, you can't blame religion for still being religion, but it's about to be 2017. It's the goddamn future. And given what we know now,

I feel like you can blame people for still being religious. Joining me for headlines tonight are two men as eager as any to get the fuck out of this miserable shithole of a year, Heath Enright and Eli Bosnick. Fellas, are you ready to abort the baby new year or what? I'm ready to carry 2016 to term and then drown it in a bucket of water. It's time. 2016 is the holding your ex-wife's new baby of years. Right.

But it's dead because Heath drowned it in a bucket of water. That's what this is. It's just like, oh, my friend, he works with me on the show. It's like radio. And that's not important. Here's what happened. So in our lead story tonight, it turns out that the most terrifying thing about Jeff Sessions' impending approval as the attorney general may have nothing to do with Jeff Sessions. And intimately acquainted with the boundless stupidity of Alabamians, two-term Governor Robert Bentley has interviewed none other than attempted theocratic judicial state dictator Roy Moore as a possible candidate to take over Sessions' soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat. That's right. A man who has been removed from the state Supreme Court for ethics violations twice is on the short list to become one of the country's 146 most powerful people.

See, you say that like the guys in number one and number two spots are better, and that's why... Well, it's an average of all of them, ultimately, but... Also, if Roy Moore is at the top of a list, just in general, any list, that is terrifying. Who the fuck else is on there? Like Calvin Candy and a literal dog who barks at black people? What does that list look like?

I wouldn't be all that surprised. I would vote for the shit out of that dog. You can socialize. He can be helped. He can be helped. So, okay, I should point out that there's probably some self-interest involved here. Like Moore has two failed gubernatorial bids under his belt already, and Bentley's currently embroiled in a sex scandal that has his approval rating well below 50%.

So if he survives current impeachment efforts, he might just be taking out a strong competitor for 2018. And believe me, when you're a 74-year-old bald pussy hound that looks like Larry David chose poorly, being the governor is pretty much the only chance you have. Yeah, that or hanging around the JCC locker room naked for too long. I know that guy. Hold on, though. Bald pussy hound or bald pussy hound? Never mind.

I guess the locker room works either way. Really? Depends on the locker room you're hanging out in. Lateral thinking. That's what we're talking about. Problem solver. Problem child solver. Lindsay Lohan.

She was in that movie, right? Bald pussy. Bald pussy hound. Got it. It's like an infinite regress of sub-references there. I was just i was just backing up to see how far it would go one listener gets all the jokes just cut flash cut to me listening to our show i got it this is like the joke equivalent of

whittling y'all listen to this part into a mirror and in the queen will have to save herself news-save-herself news tonight, if we've learned anything from the 70-something Christian movies we've watched over on Godawful Movies, it's that the number one cause of atheism is mom cancer. It is. It is. And seeing as 2016 has been the cancerous mom of years, it should come as a surprise to nobody that a recent UK poll showed a whopping

4% decrease in religious belief in the UK this year. Yeah, see, that's just good parenting. Lots of moms taking one for the team. Speaking of which, Heath, I need my lots of moms taking one for the team DVD back. When I'm done. You're never done. Anyways, we're not doing this right now the poll which was conducted by yougov for the times showed that those who believed in a higher power dropped from

32 to 28 while the folks who actually declared themselves atheists went from 33 to 38 oh awesome so we've got like 72 atheists and more than half of them know what that word means. Well done. Well done, guys. Yeah, so I guess I'm happy for the UK, but I'm super jealous of those numbers. Right? It just doesn't seem fair. I mean, we Brexited like 240 years ago.

Seems like we should be doing better at this point. Right? We even did it for fake reasons led by bigots. It's bullshit. Yeah. We're just copying our shit. And look, are we saying that this happened because we were at QED this year? We're not saying yes, and we're not saying no.

What I am saying is if we get a main stage spot next year, I can promise Marsh and Andy 45%, maybe 50%. I'm just saying. Yeah, we could have given way more moms cancer with a bigger room. I wear a little charm made of uranium all the time at this point. And obviously this is good news. But as Noah said earlier this year in one of his diatribes, it isn't to be taken as a victory so much as it should be taken as more troops for a possible victory. If 2016 has taught us anything, it's that overconfidence is a bad idea.

However, I hope this little spot of sunshine inspires you, listening to this, to bring even more folks into the fold or maybe even just come out to a few more folks yourself. And when those new soldiers need dick jokes, we'll be there. Noble dick jokes. There's like an American flag behind me.

You can't tell, but it is. It's on fire. I didn't burn it, though. It's just on fire. It's always on fire. Trump's coming after you. And in third Rikers Island news tonight, a school in Taiwan

thoroughly disgraced itself last week by allowing students to hold a reenactment of a Nazi rally in celebration of christmas like you do like you do like you do indeed pretty standard but the fun got ruined when a sensible human being heard about the event and notified the anti-holocaust portion of society just say jews heath we're called jews uh racist that's your one this led to severe consequences for the school and the resignation of the principal who realized he's a piece of human garbage yeah and i'm this is true the name of the school

in question was the quang fu high High School. So when a group of angry parents rose up to force his resignation, everybody was Quang Phu firing. Also racist, that's your one. Oh, Noah got a one. Noah got his first one. Picturing a giant chalkboard with

infinite hash marks. Now we gotta make a climb up a very high ladder to the top there you go hon stoop merry christmas yeah so uh i really wish i was making this story up but um i'm not i'm not um apparently the idiots who run the school over there let the kids vote on the theme of their thing and the winning choice was adolf hitler uh i'm assuming hillary clinton was also considered but nobody liked the idea of honoring a murderer so i see okay this brings two questions of mine one what place do you think harambe and bodie mcboatface came in and two, what's that teachers meeting like where they're like, oh,

all the kids chose Hitler. Are we bad teachers? I feel like we're bad teachers. I feel like we did a bad job here at this school. I would love to see what they would have come up with for a Harambe parade. Oh! Yeah, well, Harambe and

Bodie McBoatface, they had potential, but I think they got sabotaged by the DNC. Anyway, back to the Hitler eutanasia thing. All the students dressed up in Nazi regalia wore swastika armbands and marched around with swastika flags. And, of course, the entire procession was led by a cardboard German tank with some kid doing a literal Sieg Heil out of the top. Silver lining, the record for worst photo op of a person sticking his head out of a tank is no longer held by Michael Dukakis. It's nice for him anyway. Eli doesn't get that.

You have to admit, though, this was a pretty badass cardboard tank. It really was. I feel like we should justifiably be terrified of a nation that has high school Nazis that can mock up a tank that well. I'm just saying they wind up with one of our drones. Maybe we don't Twitter troll them over it. As my friend Adolf Hitler used to say, that tweet is going to holocaust you. R.I.P. Willie. R.I.P.

Always in our hearts and minds. Hashtag call forward to call backward. Hashtag blessed. Hashtag 2017. So one other interesting detail here. By chance, the wintertime for Hitlermas gala happened around three weeks after taiwan's president received a phone call from donald trump about whatever the fuck it is they discussed now i'm not saying these two things were related but that's the timeline of events

that's in here let me put my guy steve on he's got an idea for your Christmas play or whatever. Bottom line, as we all know, Hitler was an atheist. And this is what happens when a country allows our group to get too large. I see. Let's all be mindful. We have similar proportions here in the United States. Never forget.

And in beard hair over the rainbow news tonight, you know, at this time of year, I get a bit sentimental. As friends and loved ones come to mind, so do the gifts that keep on giving. Namely, creationist, failed amusement park owner, and gold rush panhandler impersonator, Ken Ham, who gave us something Patreon.com never could. A nearly endless supply of stupid things to make fun of this year. Now, to be fair, I don't think you're considering Patreon's back-end operating interface. I'm just saying, if we started a podcast called

Here's a Dumb Fucking Thing Patreon's Doing, it would have a limited appeal but no lack of material. Noah's emails to Patreon make the Nuremberg trials look like an encyclopedia brown story he's just doing his job following orders but back to ken ham as if opening and then dramatically failing at an amusement park dedicated to a flood that never happened wouldn't be more than enough for any scathing satirist ken decided to end the year with a bang by lighting up the arc rainbow colors in an attempt to quote take back the rainbow and quote from gay people oh yeah so stupid what an idiot that doesn't even make any sense i mean everybody knows the gays

traded like half the rainbows to skittles in exchange for Skittles. And the other half went back to the leprechauns in exchange for a flute that makes you sing and dance better. Obviously. Pay attention, Ken Ham. Also, Andrew got me 2% of the rainbow for that Facebook status earlier. Oh, there you go. There you go. I just want to know how many cavity searches it took before he admitted that the gays weren't keeping the rainbows in there.

Or Skittles. We don that the gays weren't keeping the rainbows in there. Or Skittles. Well, we don't know that they weren't. I'm going to go with lots. What's your record? Well, it's weird because my butthole has a problem saying Chubby Bunny. And it's just like... It's a whole thing.

My record's on Goatsy. Check it out. Nice! Google it and show it to your kids. Happy New Year. In a blog on his website, Ham explained that while today we associate the rainbow, albeit in a different color arrangement, with gay pride, we should remember that God created the rainbow as his covenant with man, not to drown everyone on earth again.

Covenant with man, not to drown everyone on earth again. Super best friend promise, which led me, and maybe I'm late to the party here, to a startling revelation. Ken Ham literally believes the way light is refracted by water was invented by God after drowning the whole world, leaving me to wonder, what does Ken think happened to light refracting through water before God killed all the babies on the planet for being sinful? Well, here's the thing. Before the flood, there was a giant vapor canopy over the earth. So the only wavelengths of light getting through were the life extending ones that made you like 900 years old. The only color back then was monoatomic gold. Real scientists have done the math, by the way, so this does actually add up because water vapor absorbs more light than liquid water, so if you take his vapor canopy notion seriously

and then put enough water in there to flood the Earth, it wouldn't have mattered since no light would break through and the antediluvian Earth would just be bathed in perpetual darkness anyway. You know, Wolverine actually first appeared in a Hulk comic. See, we all know things. We all equal know equal amounts of things. You at home just so you know. We all know our own levels of expertise.

For what it's worth, the thing you just said is way more interesting than the thing I said. We each did one. All tied. And that's why global warming happened. Anyway, at the conclusion of the blog, Hamalamadingdong went on to remind us not to get

too cocky with the whole God said he would never drown us again thing. Reminding us that a judgment is coming and that just like the flood that didn't happen, those who doubt it will make fun of the people who predict it. It's very meta. It's very meta.

The point is, Happy New Year, Ken. You bright, beautiful, crazy piece of shit. And while we reach out to our LGBT allies To see what it would take to make arcs The new symbol of gayness We're going to pause for a quick break And hand things over to my lovely wife Lucinda

You know I try to be sympathetic to people I disagree with. For the purposes of this segment, I tend to lump them into a category and otherize and make fun of them. But in my day-to-day life, I make a serious effort to understand where people are coming from. Hell, my Facebook feed is loaded with gun-toting, Jesus-loving, bright-bert--reading, fake-news-sharing South Georgia rednecks, and I dutifully read their posts in an honest effort to figure out how the fuck a person can be so passionate about being so wrong. And when it comes to abortion protesters, I can get really close to sympathetic. I mean, if you take their rhetoric at face value, they think babies are getting murdered. So I can see how that gets you bent out of shape a bit.

they think babies are getting murdered. So I can see how that gets you bent out of shape a bit. But the problem is that I can't take their rhetoric at face value with them constantly undermining it with their own actions. So before I finish that thought, let's talk about Governor John. I was about as close to being president as I was to being Miss America Kasich, who struck down a heartbeat abortion ban in Ohio this week that would have made abortion illegal after six weeks, which, in case you're not familiar with how abortion actually works, basically would have

made abortion illegal, period. And to Kasich's credit, he vetoed it. However, the 20-week abortion ban he signed into law as a compromise isn't a hell of a lot better. This law, and laws like it, really serve one purpose, and that's to stop abortion however they can. And that leads us back to the baby killing. I mean, I'm tempted to say, OK, so you think it's baby killing, but you're willing to accept it for 20 weeks. But I get it. If you're in a fight, you can't win. You compromise and you take what you can get.

If they thought we didn't save all the babies, but we saved some of them, you could see how they could chalk that up to a minor victory, a foot in the door to hopefully keep pushing that week count back one legislative session at a time. But even then, this isn't an effective way to stop abortions or even slow them down. It's just a way to make women go to Michigan for them. Now, if they actually thought it was baby murder, you wouldn't see them hanging out in front of abortion clinics because they'd be too busy hanging out on college campuses giving away condoms. They'd be too busy raising funds to get birth control for women who couldn't afford it on their own. They'd be too busy lobbying for a comprehensive sex education. They'd be investing their time in all those things that actually reduce abortion rates. And I mean, look, I know the Bible says premarital sex is bad,

but even the most ardent fundamentalists don't say it's as bad as murder. It's just bad. And even if you think premarital sex is going to send these poor youngins to hell, it seems like preventing baby murder would be the obvious focus. Fuck barging in with guns and bombing abortion clinics. Where the fuck are the Christians on a campaign to actually end teen pregnancy? Wouldn't there be at least a few? Wouldn't it be at least a line of defense to save a fucking baby?

And while you all are pondering that, I'll hand things back over to Noah, Heath, and D-Li. Thank you, Lucinda. And in I Want My Babies Backed Ridge news tonight, a new billboard... That's great. I'm very proud of that. After you hear this, go back, listen to it again. I did an awesome job.

Call boat. A new billboard in Texas took a break from advertising the usual old country buffet, places to donate your car, and terrifyingly depressing adult outlet in the middle of nowhere to sell Texans on a new product, namely, killing your babies. Huh. Okay, well, I thought that place had a great selection.

You were just asking for really obscure stuff. Nobody has that. Doesn't matter. I'm happy about the new billboard. It was getting super hard to kill a baby over there. I feel like you're leaving out Hispanic babies, but I get your point. Overall. Also, depending on how you use the fireworks and karate stuff they sold next

door, I'm just saying you're not thinking outside the box. Or inside the box. Anyway, that's another point. Schrodinger's baby. It's dead though, guys. The billboard, which reads, quote, vaccines can cause autism choose intelligent design end quote what yep which is the yeah on the billboard which is only slightly more dangerous than one that

might read you can drive with your eyes closed go for it go 90 uh was posted by DrFit.com, a website run by Roby Mitchell, MD, who, fun fact, had his medical license revoked in 2012 for prescribing colostrum bovine treatment to cure cancer and was arrested for trying to carry a loaded gun on a plane this year. So what we're saying is super smart dude knows a ton about a ton of stuff well worth listening to yeah take some advice from this motherfucker okay i'm confused i just want to make sure i understand this um the two options on this billboard are disease prevention plus autism or faith in a wizard who created diseases and autism because that's intelligent those are the two choices yeah it's such a way i mean it's like he's trying to sneak the intelligent design shit in by like distracting us with the negligent baby murder at the beginning also i should point out while i couldn't actually find anything on his site currently about autism,

he does sell a ton of weight loss and acne supplements, as well as a bunch of advice in blog form, which, by the way, is that you should buy his supplements. He also has an article on there that seems to be skeptical of the existence of diabetes. So, fun stuff. What does that even mean? Diabetes? I'm not buying it. Sounds like foot leprosy.

Maybe your cat just wants ass play. Did you ever think of that? Me and Dr. Fit agree. Finally. Lucinda punches hard. But all of this of course brings to mind the question, is there any dangerous lie you're not allowed to put up on a billboard in Texas? And hey, what are questions without answers?

Which is why I'm proud to announce our latest GoFundMe to buy a billboard in Texas that claims I can fuck away your chronic Lyme disease. And see if people will let me put it up somewhere. Because if it's not illegal to fuck over some kid's life, you should be able to do it to an adult. It seems like it's worth stepping into Mr. Wizard's laboratory on this one anyway. Well, I haven't seen any studies that refute your claim about the Lyme disease thing. So if anything, yours should be more legal. At the very least.

Also, a quick update on this i wrote that as a joke uh but for fun i like checked with andrew this afternoon before i recorded and apparently as long as we indicate that it's parody on the billboard itself by like having a picture of me naked on a heart-shaped bed like tastefully covered in ticks and do like f dash dash k it's totally legal totally also guys i checked billboards in texas are like 500 bucks a month what i'm saying is it's happening stay tuned for updates i don't think you and a heart-shaped bed covered in ticks is necessarily indicating parody, but I suppose you are. And finally tonight, from the Islamabad file, Pakistan International Airlines is once again operational and safe to fly with, thanks to their ground crew at Islamabad Airport, who recently warded off the evil crashing spirits by chopping a goat's head off.

So if you were planning to visit Pakistan using this airline, you should definitely not do that because there's a very good chance you'll arrive there. I have so many follow-up questions. I'm honestly shocked that nobody asked me to do that at the airport security in Dublin. You know, forced me to declare my loyalty to the human species or something. That was the next step in the process. As one of the three humans who saw you go through Dublin security, if they'd given you the option of twisting the head off a toddler not to go through that, we'd have a new wine cozy right now.

Wouldn't we, though? Finally. to go through that, we'd have a new wine cozy right now. Wouldn't we though? Finally! Okay, so here's what happened. The need for chopping a goat's head off became apparent earlier this month when one of their flights crashed, killing all 47 passengers. Recognizing that God was clearly

acting out for attention and hungry for face mutton, apparently, a group of team members found a black goat, brought it out on the dirt mac, and killed it with, I'm assuming, a sword. Although, to be fair, it could have been a guillotine, which is far less ridiculous. They ask if it'll take the mark first.

They put the goggles on the goat. It sees a bunch of hay some cans okay questions now one who is the guy who suggested sacrificing the goat like when was that they meeting they're like oh what do we and the guy was like two did they then let everyone on the plane know like hey guys just in case you were worried, the people operating this super complicated machine filled with explosive liquid just killed an animal to please

God, so we're all good. Don't even worry about it. Here's your peanuts. Our movie today is The Tourist. Yeah, so decapitating animals for magic sounds pretty stupid and awful however it does seem to be working so far since the sacrifice last week pakistan international

airlines is batting a thousand on not crashing oh well there you go that's good and if we're looking at the bigger picture um brutally murdering goats for airplane safety is easily the most benign sword thing that Muslims are doing these days. Compliment sandwich. Well, there you go. But most importantly, they're going to need us to help with some marketing stuff. So let's go ahead and put 30 seconds on the clock. Ideas for religious torture themed airlines.

Go. All right, all right. El Al-Qaeda? No, it seems like they'd just be torturing themselves, though, so never mind. Religious-themed, religious torture-themed. Ryanair. Only the people who have flown Ryanair will get it, but they'll all get it. I second Ryanair.

Also, maybe FG Emirates? We do fly to Iran, but mostly Africa. But we do fly to Iran. Suck it. I believe this is a subsidiary of you better still be a virgin Atlantic. Yeah, exactly. How about going a little Western? Papal Airlines,

put your seat in the full Spanish Inquisition. About Bestial Italia. Might be in the full Spanish Inquisition. About bestial Italia. Might be in the rear, but cattle class is an upgrade. Oh, yeah. The way we do it. All right, I ran out of good ones, so I'm torn between two bad ones.

I have Drawn and Quantus and Lufthansa me, damn it! Oh, yeah. From the people who bring you abstinence-only education, Jet Blue Balls, Blue Above Balls, inspiring over-the-pants handies. damn it oh yeah from the people who bring you abstinence only education jet blue balls blue above balls inspiring over the pants handies all right exactly a torture yeah well i'm sticking with bestialitalia when in rhone at least you're not fucking a human kid. Roan. That's good. Roan. Cattle. And with a rare, yeah, exactly, a rare obscure word compliment for cow

fucking Catholic priests. We'll cap off the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Being white. And when we come back, Bryce Blankenagle will be here to let slip the dogs of war. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome on Islamabad Airlines. This is your captain speaking.

Just a few safety features before the flight gets started. Please take a moment to notice the exits at the front and sides of the plane, which you'll notice have been smeared with goat's blood, so the angel of death passes this over. In the event of a loss of cabin pressure, an Uncala mask will drop from the ceiling, allowing you to ask your ancestors for guidance. Please affix your own mask before attempting to help others reach the spirit realm.

You'll find a life vest under your seat with a lucky rabbit's foot, communion waver, and Jewish baby's foreskin. Please do not inflate the foreskin until you've left the plane. Our in-flight movie today is The Tooth Fairy, starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson. We should be in Atlanta in about 45 minutes, God willing. Last week, Bryce joined us to discuss the lead-up to the Missouri Mormon War of 1838, and just when we were getting all the good bloodshed, I cut him off and blue-balled the entire audience. Well, now that you've suffered through your family's Christmas shit, I figure the least I can do is, like is finish the story for you here.

So rejoining me now is Bryce Blankenengel of the Naked Mormonism podcast. Bryce, welcome back. Thank you, Noah. Thanks for inviting me again. Hey, you bet. So how was your Christmas? What did you get? What did you get?

I got into fights with my family. How about everybody else? Yeah, right. Did you get those for Christmas gifts? Yeah, no kidding. All right. Do you get those for Christmas gifts? Yeah, no kidding. All right. So last time on the Bryce Blankenengel interview, there were escalating tensions between the Mormon settlements in Missouri and the outlying counties. Persecution at the polls led to a molehill of a scuffle that turned into a mountain of conflict upon retelling. And this culminated in an armed mob running around telling sheriffs and whatnot to sign contracts telling them what they could and couldn't do to Mormons. So from there, I'm just going to let you take over. Did I give you the right setup?

Did I get anything wrong in there? That is absolutely perfect. So as we know from last week, the Mormons that were moving into Missouri were destitute. They had nothing with them. Most of them were fleeing from Ohio with absolutely nothing but the clothes on their back and maybe their horse. So they essentially created a resource vacuum. Now, I don't know if any listeners live in Missouri. I really hope you don't. But the winters there can be fairly harsh. And we're coming up into middle of October of 1838 here. They couldn't just go to the grocery store and buy shit when they ran out of food. Like they had, each person was responsible for getting their family through the winter.

And each family knew that if they didn't have enough staples, enough stocks to get them through the winter, they might not get out on the other side alive. They could very realistically starve. So with this absolute vacuum of resources that was created, the Mormons had no other option but to go raid villages the way that they had been raided by the anti-Mormon mobs. So the Mormons, David Patton rode it to Gallatin, and there's a couple of other groups that were members of the Danites and the army of Israel to synonymous terms that rode to Millport and to any of the outer lying villages. And they chased out the inhabitants of them. They stole all their property and they burned their houses to the ground just like the people had been doing to the Mormons. Like you look at it, they're starving.

Their women and children are starving. What else are they going to do, right? Well, and I don't want to let them off the hook too much here because there was – from what I read, there was – there were a lot of ways like they passed up on opportunities to be humane. For example example you can steal people's shit without burning down their house right you know and also there were a number of people in these towns that were you know the the few mormon supporters of the people that were sympathetic to the mormons stores that would trade with mormon stores that would give mormon shit on credit and that were also burned down in this raid. So, you know, like we can forgive a certain amount of this,

but at a certain point, this is just a military action. And although I don't know that there were any deaths involved in it, it is a violent military action. Absolutely. And that you're talking about, that was actually the store of Jacob Stollings in Millport. And when they wrote it, sorry, in Gallatin. And when David Patton, General, you Fearnot wrote in there, he stole the receipt books.

He made a very concerted effort to take Jacob Stolling's receipt books. This guy who had been selling property to the Mormons on credit and he – the guy never recovered the receipts. So like they're – I mean we can say like if they wouldn't have done this, they would have starved and that's 100 percent true. But there was also like a little bit of malice and vindictiveness that was interwoven into this. And there's no way to really grasp a full understanding of what the rhetoric was like that drove these people to such drastic actions. Right, right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Definitely don't want to place too much judgment on one side or the other. It seems like this is a story without a good guy. Yes, exactly. So essentially, the rhetoric exploded at the time after the Gallatin

election happened. Like I said, that was the powder keg that had exploded. And eventually, Missourians took three people prisoners, two of which were Mormons and one was just a Mormon sympathizer. And this was Captain – sorry, General Bogart who took these people and he took them and camped out at what was called Crooked River, a little bend in the river, Missouri River in the area. And when Joe heard about this, that's when he told Patton to, quote, go and kill every devil of them, end quote. And that's exactly where we actually left the story off last time. So, all right, all right.

So let's get to some violence and shit. Yes. So let's get to some violence and shit. Yes. So General Bogart, he – at Crooked River, he was a state-sanctioned militia. But the Mormons didn't know that. They just thought that he was just an anti-Mormon mob. And as things play out further, it's like, yeah, he was very opposed to the Mormons. So it's understandable that they had that idea.

So then we get to what's called the Battle of Crooked River. Now, this guy, Captain Bogart, General Bogart, sorry, had his troops camped out there. So David Patton organized what was called a company of men. And then on his way to Crooked River, he was able to gather more than 40 or 50 men that just joined up for the duty. So a bunch of Danites were ready to go march on here. And then what happened? This is more reading out of the 1838 Mormon War in Missouri. Ebenezer Robinson said that Patton, highly esteemed and loved by his brethren, seemed reckless of his life as though it was scarce worth preserving.

This guy, Captain Fearnot, he's kind of a psycho. And what he did, he said he would rather die than allow the persecution to continue. So this guy goes into fucking battle wearing a conspicuous white blanket overcoat. And they marched in the middle of the night. But by the time they got there, it was morning and they could see this guy just with a bright white fucking coat standing out in the middle of the field so the mormons attacked from an extremely inferior position it was now daybreak and they stood on nearly open ground making excellent targets in the early morning light while the missourians lay well hidden behind trees and brushes along the river bank below three or four of patton's men fell during the first round of fire,

two or more on the second, but he was unable to determine what damage, if any, had been inflicted upon the Missourians. Realizing that his men could not long endure such withering fire, Patton ordered a precipitate charge upon the Missourians' camp. The Mormon troops, shouting their watchword,

God and liberty, drew their swords and flung themselves into the enemy ranks. Bogart's men panicked. Most of them immediately fled across the river, and those who remained were soon routed after brief hand-to-hand combat. Many of the soldiers shouted, we are brethren, that's a Mormon quote, as they waded through the river hoping to halt the Mormons' fire until they could escape. Hosea Stout, a Mormon participant, later remarked that many a mobber was there baptized without faith or repentance under the messengers of lead sent by the brethren. All right, that's pretty clever. All right, what a cocky prick.

But like, seriously, kind of a badass too at the same time. So what happened? The Missourians dispersed. Bogart's men dispersed. And the Mormons thought, okay, so we suffered casualties. Three Mormon men died along with seven other that suffered wounds. And no Missourians died. All right.

But okay. wounds and um no missourians died all right but okay so now here's what and this is and i this every mormon story ends up with something like this all right so what you've got here is them losing the battle but being too stupid to recognize it and thus scaring the people that are winning the battle into leaving that's exactly what happened and they scattered like flies i mean it was because they're saying like like well apparently killing these people isn't enough to dissuade them so what the hell will no okay i get it though i get it there are times when like the mormons show up at my door and i'm like man if there was a fucking river i could swim across under fire right now yeah no okay all right okay so and the most incredible part this whole party was organized to go liberate these three people that have been taken prisoner

by captain bogart well of course when the mormons started marching bogart put those three men in the front lines so that the mormons would hit them first and they killed one of their own people oh they killed one of the captives. The Mormons shot them. Yeah, they never you know, you never really associated with military acumen in these stories, too. That's another running theme of the Mormon stories. OK, but one way or the other, I guess this is going to make the the governor look like a complete jackass, though, like like this Mormon mob just ran off his militia yes well and also the shitty rumors that were going around in the really really shitty reporting at the time like they didn't have phones or internet all they had were letters that would take days to get to and from each other the rumors were going that

this massive battle had occurred right the crooked river you know hundreds of missourian had died and then they'd been all perpetrated at the hands of these violent Mormon Danites, the Mormon death squad. And, you know, no Missourians actually died. They just scattered and ran in all directions to any nearby town. And then all of the soldiers that were part of Captain Bogart's, sorry, General Bogart's team, they just went and told wherever they fled to the story of what had just happened. So, of course, rumors go up and rumors abound of the Mormons being violent and attacking this state sanctioned militia. That is an act of war.

Simple as that. I guess it is. Yeah. Lilburn Boggs had his political career in kind of in the balance here because two separate times, he organized militias to march to Davies County or Caldwell County or any of these Mormon counties to go and quell the insurrection. But then he would receive a letter a day or two later saying that the problem had been taken care of and that all is well so that he would gather these these militias and then have to disband them and he looked like a fucking idiot in the the reports the newspaper

reports because they're like are are these militias gonna go attack the mormons we don't know but eventually he issued what was called his mormon extermination order let me read this real quick quote since the order of this morning to you directing you to cause 400 mounted men to be raised within your division, I have received by Amos Reese Esquire of Ray County and Wiley C. Williams Esquire, one of my aides, information of the most appalling character. river, which entirely fate changes the face of things and places the Mormons in an attitude of open and avowed a defiance of the laws. And having made war upon the people of this state, your orders are therefore to hasten your operations with all possible speed. The Mormons must be treated as enemies and must be exterminated or driven from the state if necessary for public peace. Their outrages are beyond all description.

And this essentially gave quasi-legal justifications for the Missouri militias to do anything they wanted to the Mormons. Right, right. He just gave them justification and permission. Yes, and permission. And that's the scariest part is this was not at the hands of a governor doesn't have legal right to condemn an entire subsect of the population to die. Right. Simple as that.

That's not a thing. Yeah, so I'm getting the feeling like this is not going to end well for the Latter-day Saints. Yes, your gut is telling you the right stuff. Either that or you did some research before. I'm not sure which. What happened was Hans Mill next. So Hans Mill was this little settlement in Caldwell County. It was owned by a guy named Jacob Hahn who was not a Mormon but was friendly to the Mormons.

by a guy named Jacob Hahn, who was not a Mormon, but was friendly to the Mormons. And Joseph had told the people of Hans Mill to evacuate and go to Far West, because Far West was one of the twin sanctuaries. There's Far West and Diamond. Those are the Mormon sanctuaries. So Hans Mill, Jacob Hahn, and a few other people had said, it's okay, we can defend the Mormons here. It's okay. It's totally cool.

But this is what happened at Hahn's Mill. No one knows who ordered the attack at Hahn's Mill. The militia companies had participated in the assault belonged to General Park's brigade, but he did not issue the order. The troops organized under the command of Colonel Thomas Jennings, who apparently acted on his own initiative in leading the attack. It is possible that the Missourians received word of Governor Boggs' extermination order and took it upon themselves to carry out the decree, but they never offered this as a reason for the raid. So we have to say that this is – what had happened, this mob attacking – this militia attacking Hans Mill, they were a state-sanctioned militia. However, they didn't have orders to go attack the Mormons there. So this is continuing on in the book.

The Mormons at Hans Mill were not planning an attack upon Livingston settlers. That's why they were attacking them in the first place because they thought that the Mormons were going to go attack Livingston in the neighboring county. They had set guards around the village, but because of their recent treaty, they were not expecting an attack. The Missouri troops were first seen as they emerged from the woods about 100 yards from the village. The Mormons, who were simply going about their daily tasks, did not react with alarm, but stared cautiously as the Missourians formed into three companies for their attack. Many of the saints thought the troops were reinforcements from far west,

thinking they were Mormons, great. You know, we're getting reinforcements, that's great. Captain Comstock, who was an anti-Mormon, fired his rifle into the air, after which 10 seconds of silence followed. Now, just try to picture yourself here during this, because this is so, I can't imagine how tense it was. During the silence described by Joseph Young as a solemn pause, the Mormons began slowly to grasp the meaning of the soldiers' appearance as they anxiously searched for their wives, husbands, and children in the nearest shelter. The Missouri troops raised their guns and with a thunderous roar broke the spell of silence by firing at the

Mormon villagers. As soon as the shooting started, David Evans, the commander of the small militia force at Hans Mill, ran to the center of the village, waved his hat, and yelled for quarter. So he's saying, surrender, we surrender. So did a number of other Mormons. But the Missouri troops ignored their appeals and continued firing. Mothers frantically gathered their children and fled into the woods. A rifle ball pierced Mary Steadwell's hand as she attempted to jump a log. Her dress caught the log and she fell over it, protected as another 20 balls peppered the fallen tree. 15 men and three boys ran into a blacksmith shop where the Mormons had

previously determined to fight if they were attacked. They thought the shop would provide a shelter from which to defend the village, and their brief stand doubtless saved the lives of their fleeing neighbors because they attracted most of the Missourians' fire. But the shop also became a death trap, for the Missourians. Musket balls easily passed through the large unchinked cracks between the logs of the shop's walls. Inside the shop, three boys crawled under the bells for safety while the men frantically loaded, fired, reloaded, and fired again. The Missourians poured round after round into the shop while the Mormons' fire proved entirely ineffective as one by one the Mormonormon men fell the missourians slowly advanced

towards the shop until they simply shoved their muskets through the logs and fired into the crowd of bodies david lewis attempted to fire through an open window but as he raised his gun saw a missourian preparing to fire lewis ducked just as another mormon stepping to the window to fire, Lewis ducked just as another Mormon stepping to the window to fire his musket was shot in the face. Eventually, the crush of the Missourians' guns through the shop walls was so great that the defenders could not return fire, but could only desperately parry and dodge as the Missourians continued firing into the shop. About half the Mormon men had fallen when Captain Evans ordered the rest to flee, but most of them were cut down as they ran the gauntlet of soldiers. Thomas McBride, a 62-year-old Mormon who was wounded as he ran from the shop, surrendered his gun when the Missourians came upon him.

Jacob Robbers took McBride's loaded gun and discharged it into the old man's breast. Rogers then hacked at McBride with a scythe until his body was mangled from head to foot. Sardis Smith, hiding under the bellows, whose father was mortally wounded on the floor, begged for his life. But William Reynolds of Livingston County put a gun to the boy's head and blew off the top. That's a 10-year-old boy that was shot in the head. And this is what the guy said about it. Quote, nits will make lice.

And if he had lived, he would have become a Mormon, end quote. Wow. Altogether, 17 Mormons died and a number of other were wounded. And that's the massacre. That is Hans Mill Massacre. So when Joe received word from Hans Mill of what had happened there, he realized that the militia wasn't fucking around. He has to deal with this as a real life or death situation. So the militia, various militias, actually, this is three separate militias led by three separate generals surrounded far west where Joseph and Sidney Rigdon were, and they demanded

a surrender. And Joe and Rigdon surrendered. After much deliberation, these were the terms of the negotiation. First, to give up their leaders to be tried and punished. Second, to make an approbation of their property, all who had taken up arms to the payment of their debts and to indemnify for damages done to them. So that's, of course, the property the Mormons had looted. They needed to return all of that. That the balance should leave the state and be protected out by the militia but be permitted to remain under protection until further orders were given from the commander-in-chief. Basically, all the Mormons had to leave Missouri. And fourth, to give up the arms of every description to be receded for.

So they had to give up everything. In terms of their surrender, you give up everything, including your leaders, and we will not kill you. You have to leave Missouri. No Mormons are further welcome in Missouri. And that's what happened. Of course, there's so much more to this. What we talked about just now covered a period of a year and a half. And when I cover it in my show, each episode covers anywhere from like a week to a week and a half or two weeks maybe a month because everything is so dense like we just skimmed on the surface of everything that happened there's so much more to this that we just didn't even have time to get into man yeah yeah

no can i and every time like every few minutes i was like oh that would be no we can't we really don't have time for that rabbit hole too so yeah yeah well definitely if anybody wants the long version you're going to find that on naked mormonism so and there's so much more that i want to talk to you about but we are running out of time i i so i'm gonna have to just uh throw this down to my one last question and this is a complete shift of gears here uh next week we are cracking open the book Book of Mormon. We're going to be going cover to cover on it next year. And I'm wondering if there are any expert survival tips, any important warnings or disclaimers that you want to offer me before I get started on it? Well, I think I'm going to

David Michael you here because he went into it not knowing anything about it, you know, not having heard the story. He just wanted to know everything about it. So I'm just going to not give any spoilers and just say, man, you're going to have a lot more fun. All of you are going to have a lot more fun. And I mean I got to say I'm super stoked that you guys are getting into the Book of Mormon. One of the projects I'm working on is realbookofmormon.org, and there is a Book of Mormon comparative portal on that website where you can go and read the original Book of Mormon as it was dictated from Joseph's mouth and compare it side by side to the 2013 version. And if you take into account all the periods, all the verse year, that's going to be a great resource for you to see the original things that fell out of Joe's mouth while he was tripping and staring into his hat as opposed to what they have distilled into the Book of Mormon today. So I just say, man, just enjoy it.

You're going to have so much fun, and I can't wait to hear how Eli takes some of this. Awesome, man. Awesome. And of course we'll have a wait to hear how Eli takes some of this. Awesome, man. Awesome. And, of course, we'll have a link to that on the show notes as well. That sounds like a resource that I'll be using quite a bit myself too. Absolutely. I sure hope so. All right.

Well, once again, you can hear more from Bryce on the Naked Mormonism podcast or on my Book of Mormon where they're currently breaking down the doctrines and covenants. Both will be, of course, linked on the show notes. Bryce, thanks one more time for your time, bro. Thank you for having me on. It's a pleasure. You bet. Before we make like a tree tonight, I wanted to thank Jake Farr Wharton of the Ingenious Friends show

for inviting me to hang out with him last week despite serious controversy over my level of ingeniousness. Had a ton of fun recording with him as always. And if you'd like to share in the fun, of course, you'll find a link to to share in the fun, of course, you'll find a link to that episode in the show notes. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight.

We'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for our sister show's hot friend, Godawful Movies, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday. And if you're desperate for something to look forward to in the new year, you can still pick up tickets to our live recording of GAM in Chicago on January 13th. Heath, Eli, Lucinda, and I are going to be there, along with Tom and Cecil from Cognitive Dissonance,

but without you there, it just won't be a party. Obviously, we'll have a link to buy tickets on the show notes as well. Clearly, it wouldn't be a real episode if I neglected to thank Heath for yet another year of giving me the opportunity to hang out with the coolest guy I know for a living. I need to thank the lovely and talented Lucinda Lusions

for 20 years now of hanging out with my best friend on a daily basis. I need to thank Eli for always wrapping his profundity in a thick layer of grade-A dick jokes. I also want to thank Sharon from Howdy Stranger Improv for providing this week's fascinating Farnsworth quote. She didn't include a link to the study or anything, so I can't speak to the veracity of it, but I do see a lot of monkey-ass-faced people out there, so it does fit with my prior research. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's best people, Miko, BJ, The Lizard Queen, WowBFA, HomeCamelPope, Jill, KC, Michael, Stephen, Mitch, John, James, Chris, and Brian.

CamelPope, BJ, TheLizardQueen, Wow, and BFA, Home, who are so sexy their real names would have just now caused a dangerous spontaneous orgasm among our listenership. Miko, Jill, KC, Michael, and Stephen, whose gray matter had to learn origami just to fit all the knowledge in. And Mitch, John, James, Chris, and Brian, whose erections don't so much end as de-orbit. the knowledge in, and Mitch, John, James, Chris, and Brian, whose erections don't so much end as de-orbit. Together, these 15 ferociously formidable fighters of the foundationless faiths found the fortitude to further the force of our fuck-filled fulminations this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the money it takes to give us money, but there's a pretty solid chance that you do, so if you'd like me to pretend to intimate knowledge of your exquisite genitals on air, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist, whereby you'll

earn early access to an extended edition of every episode, or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at scathingatheist.com. And if you'd like to help but you were cursed by a witch to never be able to donate money to a podcast, you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review on iTunes, Stitcher, or the walls of your local truck stop restroom. Legal services for this podcast are provided by the law offices of P. Andrew Torres and our audio engineer is Morgan Clark. Our theme song was written and performed by Morgan Clark with Richard McN is Morgan Clark. Our theme song was written and performed by Morgan Clark

with Richard McNulty on guitar. All additional music was written and performed by Morgan Clark and was used with permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at skatingatheist.com. The poll. Ha ha ha ha ha. the poll which was conducted by you gov nope not ready i wasn't ready

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